In the (little) mix

In the Mix

Resident Hairdresser on the X Factor Jamie Stevens has styled the tresses of the Little Mix ladies from start to finish to great acclaim – none other than style chameleon Rihanna told Leigh-Ann how much she loved her hair when she appeared on the show!

Stylist to the stars Jamie, whose clients include Elle Macpherson, Eva Herzigova and Hugh Grant, has shaped the girls’ unique style from their initial transformations:

“I shaved one side of Leigh-Ann’s head and coloured the other side pillar-box red. To take Jesy’s hair bang on trend, I worked in a soft root stretch with darker roots and lighter ends. We’ve coloured Jade’s hair a lovely deep plum and lightened Perrie’s hair; she’s now a gorgeous platinum ash blonde and we’ve added hair extensions.”

“Perrie was an absolute dream to work with, she was happy to go with whatever I suggested. At the start we lightened her hair and added extensions but she really let me play around with her look, experimenting with Beehives, buns, top knots, curly and straight hair.”

Here are Jamie’s Highlights from 10 weeks of Little Mix:

Ice cream Diner

“This week, the theme was 1950s and we went with a 1950s style ice cream diner feel with Little Mix. We gave the girls 1950s style rolls with a modern edge. My favourite look of the whole show was Perrie’s chignon, which we tonged so it had a nice Marcel wave down the front.”

Little Mix’s Beehive

“In the semi-final, we gave all the girls a modern twist on the 1960s beehive. We applied Matrix’s Loosely Defined to wet hair to give it thickness and then we blow-dried their hair with a medium round brush. To get that beehive shape, we worked Mega Dust all the way through the hair to give it that initial volume and then added a tiny bit of backcomb to create that massive mound of volume, which we visually started to manipulate up into the beehive shape and secured with kirby grips and a strong hold hairspray.”

The Final Showdown

“For the final show, we went for simpler hair. We gave all four girls curly hair to start so it could have a natural progression from curly to a softer curl and then a wave as it dropped. My key product was Matrix’s Go Big, which is an amazing blow dry volume mousse, which I mixed with Loosely Defined texture cream to make sure the hair would hold the curls over the whole day. My hero product throughout the shows has been Matrix’s Mega Dust Volume Texturiser, a volumising dust that I applied to all the girls to give them lots of body for the final showdown. I finished it all off with a little bit of Shine Serum to keep the look super glossy.”